Million-man rally / Focus anew on elites

There should be a million Filipinos atten-ding the scheduled May 3 opposition rally prior to the May 10 elections if everything moves according to expectations. . I understand from rally organizers May 3 is now the tentative date since May 1, the earlier choice, falls on Labor Day, a day held sacrosanct by labor. It is a day the working poor demonstrate in the open to dramatize their rights, their plight. I say a million because the way I look at it, not just the opposition but the citizenry will swarm to the rally, whether it be held at the Luneta or Makati or the Circle in QC.

The government, Malacañang, shouldn’t be scared of this rally.

Contrary to what presidential spokesman Toti Bunye irrationally contends, the rally is not proof that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has already won the elections. No, sir, the rally is proof that the social rumble under our feet has reached a "critical mass" and not only the opposition but great numbers of the people now want to speak out, better still spit out their anger, their outrage at how for decades, they have held the short, rotten, miserable end of the stick.

So they should be allowed to bellow this anger. It is a legitimate anger. The police, the military, Malacañang should understand this. They must not seek to smash down its legitimacy with the stupid claim that the rally is simply a cloak to "destabilize", if not eventually bring down, the administration of GMA.

That would be a great folly.

The May 3 demonstration will end up as a cry for emancipation. It will be a cry for deep-seated, meaningful reforms that strike deep to the bone of poverty and oppression. It may indeed, on the surface, hoist political bayonets in the face of GMA. But underneath it is the people’s guts spilling out, screaming: Enough is enough. Malacañang better heed this cry. Malacañang should stop, look and listen instead of prematurely pounding the drums of election triumph, pulling out the bubbly and "dancing on the graves" of the opposition. That would be another folly.

GMA should notice a very stark fact.

About 45 per cent of all Filipinos, in the latest survey of Social Weather Stations, now declare their lives are worse off than a year ago. Only about 17 per cent, if I remember right, say their lives are better. GMA cannot cavalierly dismiss this very damaging and frightening statistic by saying she just inherited the nation’s woes from previous administrations. Yes, she might have. But in the three years she was in power, the nation splashed in the swamps, worse off than it ever was before.

It will do GMA good to realize that on May 3, she will hear not only the opposition but the nation anxiously sharpening their social knives for the battles ahead.

It will do her a lot of good to also sharpen her knives not to hit and slash back, but to se-ver the perceived foliage of ugly corruption she brings to her presidential campaign. I have attended many meetings where those in attendance almost literally vomit their revulsion at the manner government funds, money, resources are prodigally spent for her campaign. This she must understand. This Toti Bunye must understand. This GMA campaign spokesman Mike Defensor must understand.

What you sow, you will reap.

There is that line in the ground no person no matter how powerful, no president no matter how entrenched, should take care not to go beyond. That line says very clearly: "Enough is enough." GMA, in my opinion, has long overreached and overstepped the sane limits of campaign spending. The whole thing has become too brazen, too florid, too revolting, too sickening. There is no such thing as a level playing field. All the opposition political parties find themselves fighting a logistical war with toothpicks while Malacañang wields a huge, devastating bludgeon.

So far, she has been very lucky. Temporarily, I think, Raul Roco’s sickness has derailed his campaign and a great slice of his votes is flowing to GMA. So Roco has flipped to a humiliating No. 4 in the presidential surveys, below Ping Lacson, now third with 10 per cent. The former unbeatable Atlas, Fernando Poe Jr., now occupies second with 30 per cent, GMA hoisting the leader’s flag with 35 per cent. FPJ’s forces are now limping – on the homestretch at that – with lack of funds. Ping Lacson, afflicted with a bad case of elephantiasis of the ego, refuses to slide down or withdraw to give FPJ’s forces a chance to beat GMA.

Business has switched en masse to GMA. If the next survey or surveys should anoint her with a 7-8 per cent lead of FPJ, she has it made where the figures are concerned.

But is that all? If the popular perception mounts – and it will mount – that GMA made it because she was Gulliver with all the moneybags and the others were Lilliputians, then she is in for trouble. As she herself admits, the nation is bleeding badly at the knees, the elbows, the chest and the head. If she cannot stanch this critical loss of blood, I doubt she will remain long in power. Worse, the month of May is a treacherous month. Even as the vote counting starts, even as the trend shows she will haul down the presidency, if great portions of the citizenry believe the election process was rigged from the very start – then what?. Then GMA and Thor will face off.

What do I mean by that?

The multitudes might again peal protest thunder in the streets. We have often said in this column that the nation is atop a slippery slope. Just a whiff of bad air can blow it down. And GMA must keen all her reflexes, all her power, all her gifts for prodigious political wheeling and dealing to look for the balance that can keep her administration alive, the nation in forward position, the institutions of democracy in equilibrium, however shaky.

Her first test is the scheduled May 3 Million-man rally.

Her gendarmerie should undertake no step to squelch, stop, prevent, disrupt or disperse this rally. This may not look good for the government, a million pealing their discontent. While the world looks on. But so what? This is democracy. The rallyists, however numerous they may be, are in no position to unseat or topple the government. Sure, those in power will pee in their pants and shiver in their timbers – but that is all.

What this columnist is expecting is that the scheduled May 3 rally will restore sobriety to Malacañang. The wanton spending must stop. The machinery for wholesale cheating must be undone if not dismantled. The Comelec must behave at all costs. The barangay network should serve the people, not the powers that be. Benjamin Abalos should twist his face around 360 degrees to be credible. Namfrel should be allowed to be effective and not be relegated to a stupid stick in the ground.

That way, maybe just maybe, the expected bandwagon for GMA could be considerably slowed down, even stalled. And we could have a fair fight, not Malacañang’s Chatanooga Choo Choo ramming everything home.

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Our recent two-column series on the Philippine elites has to be fine-tuned.

We identified six groups. First the politicians. Second the Military. Third the businessmen. Fourth the Media. Fifth the Clergy. Sixth, the Intellectuals and the moderate Left. What has to be emphasized is that they all arise from a singular Filipino culture. It is a culture that is "damaged" according to critics. It is heavily weighed down by the centuries-old hell and heaven mystique of the outmoded Castilian strain of the Roman Catholic religion, and dollops of Hollywood where instant self-gratification is the mode.

Some anthropologists maintain that our geography probably accounts for our ineptitude as a people. Our climate is tropical, not temperate. The economist Jeffrey Sachs and the French savant Montesqieu make much of the fact that the temperate regions of the world are vastly more developed than the tropics. There are two exceptions, of course, Singapore and Hong Kong. And now Thailand and Malaysia. Why? Temperate civilizations and cultures are more dynamic, more creative and innovative, facing as they do harsh climates, severe winters, rugged tundra, so it is said.

And so the claim is that the challenges of nature are forbidding in temperate countries, not so much in palm-fringed tropical countries where people allegedly sleep and laze more than they work.

Moreover, the Philippines is splintered into more than 7000 islands. The logic here is that progress slows down to a crawl. Ideas and people cannot travel fast. The transport of goods by boat is often delayed and marooned. It takes time before the capital, Metro Manila, can leverage the islands to any kind of speed and coherence. Economic development is never even and rapid in archipelago countries. This is the "geographic" argument.

We’ll have more to say about this issue in future columns.